Posts by Vince

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Illusions of popularity?

Of course if you don't produce many, they can look really popular when there is a long wait time for them - it COULD be that they're selling like hotcakes, but I suspect (based on real world observation) that they're absolutely not.

Our local Apple Store has the watches in the middle of the place and it's notable that there are crowds constantly around the MacBooks and the iPhone, a bit less attention to the iPad and absolutely nobody near the watch - I walk past our Apple Store regularly and can't recall seeing anyone there at any point, and I suspect others will see the same.

Re: Wheels within wheels.

Yeah, I imagine people will as I know many people with at least 3 subscriptions to services that partially overlap. Amazon offers much better value for money than the others though given the money gets you multiple services.

Netflix around £7 a month gets you video... and er... well that's it.

Amazon around £6.50 (paid annually) gets you video, audio, fast shipping on real items, discounted nappies (obviously only of use if you're a parent), audiobooks and a whole host of other stuff for similar money.

Meanwhile, in our house it's Netflix that's under threat of cancellation, not Amazon or Sky - Netflix has been in the house so long we've pretty much done with watching it now - if it was worth watching, we watched it. If it wasn't, we probably also watched it too. Amazon is constantly adding value and new things. Hell I had it before anything other than shipping existed.

Always back up your data!... more than once.

Servers are backed up locally to Hard Discs (in an array or 3, every 15 minutes)

All data (documents, music files, photos, that kind of stuff) backed up to 2 different off-site services (one I control, one I don't directly control) - real time as it happens

Daily Image sync/updates and backups to another offsite location.

And yes that's at home. Because I'm paranoid. So multiple places, types and shapes of backup imaging and recovery options.

I don't want to be THAT guy at work who preaches about backups to everyone else - staff, customers and so on, and then be the one who has to admit they lost stuff. It also serves as a handy way to check how good or bad this stuff is in reality.

Re: Given how stable Windows 10 1607 AU is of late...

Re: Santander must also not be hashing passwords

Just a shame that they're so lax on the phone. Having had them transfer several thousand pound between my accounts without any security info at all on the phone, and having had them add extra security of which the extra has never in 10 years been asked for, if you were going to do something to them, you'd just phone.

But the rest is true, they use 3 inputs from me plus a visual validation of picture and phrase I set online (edit: although it appears this isn't always the case depending on account type and vintage)

(a) The hardware looks great, really nice and puts the iMac on the back foot as the "standard" of integrated machine design. It's subjective yes, but I prefer the consistently thin than really thin at edges and really thick in the middle of imac.

(b) Windows 10... I really don't like 10, and if that device had 8.1 available, I'd be interested but obviously that'll never happen.

(c) Price - it's too expensive. You can't compare to the iMac as iMac has sod all of the hardware capability - eg touch, pen, the actually-makes-sense-for-some-uses dial, plus the iMac has older processor/memory/storage tech IIRC - when they announced it it sounded like $3000 got you i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB storage - at that price, great deal, really good. But actually it's more like $4200 - and you still have to pay for the dial (unless you pre-order right now).

(d) Graphics - the choice of graphics is a bad one - it's not a current/new variant so sadly that reduces the meaningful lifespan on a device of this type more than any other - real shame.

...but sadly Windows 10 really smacks (for my purposes/interests, I realise not everyone agrees) and pushed me to Apple for the first time in years. So far, can't say I'm upset or wanting to come back to Windows.

Re: A lesson to be learnt

Re: Haven't Samsung suspended production?

Meanwhile Samsung's issues are getting all the press and Apple are laughing because nobody it talking about the increasing cases and class action cases being launched against Apple for defective iPhone 6 series devices, and various other Apple problems.

Must be good to be in Apple PR right now - you don't even have to try. Great work Samsung.

Re: SD card storage and Android

"Probably the fact that Google, in their infinite wisdom, have decreed that being able to save to a device's external SD card (and thereby do useful work on it) is somehow a "security risk".

...the same google that doesn't have good security for android and still allows any old person to install any old crap on the Google Play Store. Thanks for helping us with that SD card risk though folks!

Re: @RIBrsiq "I remember a time when tablets were supposed to kill the PC"

Trouble is that Google aren't going great guns with software - Android is a total mess, so them dabbling in hardware doesn't feel like it will end well.

The only people who did a good job of hardware/software combinations were Blackberry (pretty much extinct because they took too long to get BB10 out and by then the ship had sailed on apps) and Apple (who are doing a better job on quality of hardware than specification/features now) and the software is often questionable - lack of choice, option, control etc, but have the app support in spades.

Google makes a big deal about the Google Play Store being required as part of the certification process, yet can't be arsed to have the app store vetted for quality and malware-free content. Morons.

Well colour me surprised.

Nominet members (who are being increasingly squeezed into insignificance with the slow erosion of any way for voices to be heard) have been objecting to all of this for some time. It is quite clear that Nominet intends to be a normal commercial outfit, and we can look forward to pricing becoming ridiculous just as soon as they can get themselves out of the current non-profit regime.

It's also pretty obvious as the reserves held by Nominet are excessive for operations purely as the .uk operator and were for a long time - and it is was obvious to anyone who has been around for more than 5 minutes what is going on.

The reputation of Nominet is poor, so it will come as no surprise that the ethics and behaviour are similarly poor.

Re: Trading up?

Re: Maybe some people already own nice headphones or earphones...

Sigh.

So the reason this floppy drive thing isn't relevant is because that was a dying standard. The disks couldn't hold enough data, were painfully slow and so on.

The headphone jack, apart from needing some space is ubiquitous, easy, cheap and importantly doesn't require licensing from Apple to create accessories. It would have of course taken "courage" to make that no longer require a license and make it a free option so everyone could move to a different connector and standard without paying Apple for the right.

Re: Short duration email outage not normally mission critical

E-Mail might be *intended* as a high latency option, but in reality, if customers see any form of delay (even seconds) in receiving e-mails then I assure you it's considered the end of the world and no amount of saying it's not a real time system will satisfy the mob.

By a country mile if we have any form of e-mail issue, we get to hear about it REALLY fast.

Re: So much for Due Dilligence...

"What person smart enough to make backups in the first place fails to check to make sure the backups are useable? You make a backup & then immediately verify that the backup can be restored to recover the data."

"MS users are pretty much permanently on the lookout for alternatives to either fix things MS has borked, return functionality MS has removed in the name of "improvement" (especially in matters UI) or add functionality that MS cannot be bothered with"

I had no idea you'd been spying on my typical day. Although as I am still (and staying!) on Win 8, I guess you could actually spy on me with a webcam since it won't be randomly broken.

Re: Change management 101

Microsoft do not seem to test anything anymore, or think of anything outside a little Redmond bubble. I mean sure they've always had moments, like most software vendors, but it has become relentless.

Bug after bug, issue after issue.

Things that did work being removed for no good reason (looking at you Outlook 2016 half-removal of functionality for Exchange 2007 systems). Not really removed initially as it worked, but then broken completely intentionally a bit later.

Re: This is why Windows is no longer viable.

"I think you raise some good points, but your dire predictions are not yet supported by either reality or common sense. If you propose viable and attractive alternatives to Windows, your opinions would have greater value."

Actually the reality is that Windows 10 is breaking things on a regular basis. Source: Our Helpdesk, call volumes.

Windows prior to 10 (exc Enterprise) have control to prevent these issues where businesses can balance risk vs updates. No more.

And they didn't say "best e-mail hosting" - just web hosting... so maybe they're the UK's worst e-mail hosting provider backed by free 24 x 7 support - although I imagine others will have views on who qualifies for the "worst" accolade.

Re: Nationalization not needed.

I imagine that that FTTC you have in that rural location was paid for by a BDUK fund and thus not really by BT. They're just getting the lions share of the retail business because way too many people still think that you have to have BT as the provider. STILL.

However where there is competition BT find the money down the back of the sofa and pay for it direct.

You mean like the sort of imbalance when BT Group own EE and Openreach and thus the cost to EE of those expensive fibre links to various base stations became cost + paper pushing only as they're only moving the rest of those costs on a balance sheet and not with real money.

Yeah, if only that sort of thing had been thought of when waving that deal through by the CMA.

Re: Just a new type of

Could have waited until this year and indeed at least as recently as last week though my friend. Same offer being provided, and the storage allowances have remained as they were until now, so your free year would only just be starting. Which would be more smug.